posted
I'm developing a story with the help of a friend of mine. He's saying make the main character human (yes this is going to be a fantasy story), while I say make him a half-breed.
The half-breed would be a Shikar/Human mix. (The Shikar are a bear-type humanoid race.)
I'd like to take a poll on here and ask for your guys input. (Especially those that either read or write fantasy).
I know the direction of the story and with some help from my friend, I'll hopefully be able to send this one out.
Just confused as heck as to what to do. I want to stay true to the original idea behind the story, but if I have to change it to suit what we decide is ok, then so be it.
Y or N, does the genetic make-up of your character bear on the story? Is his/her motivation/feelings/actions/etc. driven by human-ness or Shakir-ness, or a mix of both? Is there a particular scene/theme that depends on the character's ancestry? Does being a human-Shakir give the character some special characteristic that is critical to the story?
posted
Well, exactly what would the fact that he's a half-breed have to do with the story?
Do you want you story to have a theme of racial identidy and mixed relations? Or do you just think it would sound cool if the main char. was half bear?
Also, would the fact that he's half bear have anything to do with the story?
Also, I sugest reading OSC's "How To Write Sci-Fi and Fantasy" on naming races and aliens and the like, because if these creatures are going to be just like bears, then why not call them bears? Will they have the ability to talk? Maybe they can just be magical talking bears. Will real bears exist in this fantasy world? Because if they don't, then you can't describe the creatures as bear like, because the people in the story wouldn't know what a bear looks like.
posted
"bear-type humanoid" sounds like SF to me, not fantasy -- and some fantasy has SF elements pulled in.
If this is an SF element in a fantasy, I recommend strongly against. Radically different species can't interbreed, except on Star Trek.
If it's truly fantasy -- what mythos are you mining? American Indian animal spirits can take human form -- so your offspring could be fully human, or fully bear (with ability to look human), or maybe a human who has some bear-like abilities. I would agree, no reason not to just make it a bear.
If it's Greek, maybe you'd get something like a centaur!
posted
Just a general word of advice not specifically about you.
It is really hard to collaborate. You may want to really discuss with your friend what he sees the story as and where it is going.
Because if you have two different ideas of what is happening it can can ruin the story and cause big time stress on the friendship.
If yall don't agree on what you BOTH want then agree to do something different. Otherwise you could end up with a lot of time wasted and a angry friend.
posted
On the subject of collaboration, I agree with JB Skaggs's response 100%.
As to the other issues...
You're writing fantasy. In fantasy, there's no problem having an ursine humanoid race that can interbreed with primate humanoids.
Also, there's no problem calling the ursine humanoids "Shikar" instead of just bears, because (a) they aren't just bears, (b) that may be their own name for themselves, and (c) if you're not allowed to give a different name to a sentient species biologically related to another species, we'd have to abandon the word "human" and call ourselves apes. (In fact, it seems likely that in your world, Shikar will insult humans by calling them apes or monkeys, and humans will insult Shikar by calling them bears.)
You don't have to justify your character's half-breedness by making it part of the plot. As long as you think through the implications of being a half-breed, it can merely be part of his characterization. (It's no different than choosing to have an astronaut in a first-contact story be Swedish. You don't have to justify the character's Swedishness by making meatball preparation skill integral to the success of the mission.)
So, as long as you're willing to put in the time and effort to properly think through what it means to be a Shikar-human hybrid, I think it's a good idea because it adds an extra dimension to the character. There are plenty of fantasy stories with human protagonists, and plenty with the other standard fantasy races. Using a non-standard fantasy race takes more effort, but I think it offers the reader a little something extra.
The above are, of course, just my own opinions. Your mileage may vary.
posted
I guess I can agree with Survivor a bit on that, however I only have 3 pages of a rough beginning to the story.
Mr. Stone: The Shikar are a tribe of semi-nomadic people (bearish humanoids) that raid other villages to find what they need or want. If I remember right, I've described them as 7'5 or so and 450 lbs or so. They are covered in fur and are extremly strong. They rarely use weapons, since they have 2 1/2" claws on their hands. Their fur is usually brown or some variation thereof. They don't have muzzles to speak of,they jut out about 3 inches or so. They have large canines about 2 inches or so.
The characteristics the main character would have would be the strength and endurance of the Shikar, but have the agility of a human and be more intelligent. He'd also have 2" fur on his body.
However, as my friend put it: "It would be heroic to defeat one of the Shikar warriors, but to defeat 5 or 6 of them would be monumental, with him being human. It would also be better to keep him as a human, since it would be more of a challenge for him to defeat the Shikar" or to some effect like that.
But enough of that now. Just letting you know what the Shikar are.
Does this help any of you to make a decision on why or why he shouldn't be a half-breed?
-Monolith-
[This message has been edited by Monolith (edited May 13, 2005).]
quote:The characteristics the main character would have would be the strength and endurance of the Shikar, but have the agility of a human and be more intelligent. He'd also have 2" fur on his body.
OK, it looks like the main problem with the half-breed is that he seems to have the advantages of both races but not the disadvantages. Great for him, not so great as a character.
You need to think about the disadvantages. He probably shouldn't be as strong as a normal Shikar, or as smart as a normal human (which can be difficult to write.) Are the half-breeds sterile (like mules)? Does he hibernate?
quote:However, as my friend put it: "It would be heroic to defeat one of the Shikar warriors, but to defeat 5 or 6 of them would be monumental, with him being human. It would also be better to keep him as a human, since it would be more of a challenge for him to defeat the Shikar" or to some effect like that.
By this logic, your protagonist should be a one-armed one-legged 106-year-old toothless arthritic narcoleptic blind woman with scurvy. Talk about a challenge!
It's your job as a writer to show us that the odds are stacked against the protagonist, and then give us a believable way in which the protagonist wins. The stronger your protagonist is, the stronger you make the opposition. For purposes of the formula, it doesn't matter whether your protagonist is human or half-breed.
posted
If it doesn't affect the story, don't bother. It's just one more set of continuity errors. Even if you manage to keep everything straight, but the halfbreed element isn't meaningful, your readers probably won't care about it anyway. But if you mess up even once on the continuity, you'll hear about it.
Readers love to point out how a 7'5" bear-man couldn't possiblly ride just any old horse for very long. Or how 2'5" inch claws would make using certain kinds of weapons and tools pretty hard. What if your guy has to be in disguise? Unless the bear-guys are very common, all his clothes would have to be custom made! Complications abound. Is it worth it?
posted
Well, one thing that I would wonder is how common are human-shikar hybrids and how did this one come to be born and raised?
I mean, think about that one for a bit. It was against the law for my mother to marry my father (and vice versa), and just about all of the inlaws had real issues with it. And they were both the same species.
So what is the cultural relationship of humans and shikar? What is his cultural relationship to both groups? Could you possibly tell this story if he was just a human?
If making him a human won't wreck the entire story, then make him human. If it will, then why are you even considering whether or not to keep him as a half-breed? Right now, given what you've said, I'm inclined to think that you don't have any essential reason that he couldn't just be an above average human or shikar. Because it would have come up by now.
But I don't know, I don't know your story and I don't know the status of half-breeds in your milieu.
The status of most half-breeds are that they are killed when encountered by the Shikar. Now, with that said, if I was to keep him a half-breed, he would be a product of a senseless act of violence, and then been raised by the husband of the woman that was violated. (I'd think that she would probably die as a result of the birth) As for the father, he'd rasie him like he was his own child.
His cultural relationship with the two races would be just that, a relationship. He'd feel like he fits in with the humans and would be shunned by the Shikar.
And the answer to your question can I write it if he were just a human? The answer to that is: Yes. And that's what I'm doing at the moment.
He's going to be an above average human. Most of the men are average height/weight for modern times,(somewhere around 5'11 or so and about 185, I think that these are the norms) he's going to be 6'5" and weigh 275lbs.
Now I hope that this helps a tad bit.
If you have anymore questions Mr. Survivor, please feel free to ask.
posted
So, it's unusual for humans to kill a half-shikar infant at birth, and a halfbreed would generally be accepted in human society? That's the kind of detail that would tend to ring very false, unless most humans can't tell the difference between a halfbreed and a shikar. Which would make it seem very odd for him to fit in with humans.
It doesn't matter, if you're leaning towards just making him a heroic class human. You don't have to deal with the question of miscegenation at all in that case. One thing to consider though, if halfbreeds aren't mules, and it happens at all, there are probably a few lineages that involve a shikar-human halfbreed back somewhere in the mix. Giving him one half-skikar ancestor three generations back would be more like making him Swedish, unusual but not something that would need to utterly dominate the story.
Another thing to consider, if the shikar animosity towards halfbreeds was an essential motivation for the scene you initially described, that scene might not work now that he's a normal human and the shikar have no particular reason to kill him.
Again, I'm pretty much shooting in the dark. The essential test is in the audience. Only someone that reads the story can really tell whether or not it's working. There are major plausibility issues here (even if we use magical biology, readers will still jump on "magical" social psychology), major characterization issues, and even some major milieu issues. But they are things that can't easily be judged without reference to the actual text.
posted
Half-breeds are a major theme in fantasy. It takes alot of attention to be done right. I personally like them, and have many stories planned that involve them. But it is a thing that can't be done casually, (not that I'm saying you are) If it isn't important to the story then don't include it because I expect something like that to be important. Of course all of this is theory. I agree with Survivor, it needs to be read wholly.
Posts: 1895 | Registered: Mar 2004
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